Today is Pi Day, March 14, 2022!
Each year NASA celebrates pi with a host of educational activities that focus on its importance to our missions.
This “Pi in the Sky” math challenge gives students a chance to take part in recent discoveries and upcoming celestial events, all while using math and pi just like NASA scientists and engineers. In this problem, students use the mathematical constant pi to calculate the volume and density of Mars’ liquid core.
Since 2018, the InSight lander has studied the interior of Mars by measuring vibrations from marsquakes and the “wobble” of the planet as it rotates on its axis. Through careful analysis of the data returned from InSight, scientists were able to measure the size of Mars’ liquid core for the first time and estimate its density. In Core Conundrum, students use pi to do some of the same calculations, determining the volume and density of the Red Planet’s core and comparing it to that of Earth’s core.
More on the NASA Pi Day Challenge from JPL.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech